


to race Thanatos

by toujours_nigel



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Renault
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Deathfic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-19
Updated: 2010-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Grasping the body with both fists, lying across it, mouth pressed to its face, was Alexander."</p>
            </blockquote>





	to race Thanatos

The boys have gathered to race—_his boys, all, his empire made flesh, Greek blood, Macedonian blood mixed with Persian_—when someone hurtles clumsily to his seat, clutches at him. Pants in great gasping breaths. The trumpets are sounded, and still the boy stands gasping, clutching at his arm, tears disfiguring his face—Menesthes, Hephaistion’s sister’s son, he has been guarding Hephaistion, standing at his door and sitting in his room, company for a sick man—the company he cannot always be.

 

“Speak.”

 

“Alexander, he,” a great gasp, wracking him. “Alexander.” Another breath—the boy gasping as though he has competed in the Olympic foot-race, as though he is grasping the last air he will draw. “Alexander, Hephaistion…”

 

_But he was better. He was better, and he was laughing, and cursing at his doctor_. “What of him?”

 

The boy has still a grip on him, not slackened though he hangs from his hands like a puppet, like a child’s toy, and now he keeps his hold as he is thrown away, and they are running, hand-fast, from the pavilion, shoving aside those too slow to move.

 

And the one thought in his mind is that he will not be fast enough, will not reach in time, labouring for breath—_is he dying, are they all dying, Menesthes and he and Hephaistion? Fitting that they should, but it cannot be, it is not true, that Hephaistion is dying. He was better. He had never been in grave danger. He had never been ill enough to perish._

 

The boy is still speaking, grief pouring out now, and bewilderment, and he would stop to dash those tears—_too early to sorrow, and foolish, because Hephaistion cannot die. Cannot. Must not._ “He… Alexander, Alexander, he wanted… he was speaking with us, before, but we…”

 

_He is dying. He is dying and you are not with him_. “No.” _He is. You left him alone, and he is dying._

 

“Alexander?”

 

He shakes his head, moves on, aware of and ignoring the men at his heels. _He is not dying. He cannot be. He was better, last night. He was better._

 

And then he is in the room—the silver red from the hangings, the sun seeping in. And on the bed Hephaistion, and a man slithering off it, coming to stand near Menesthes. Xanthos, he registers, and files away—he will speak to him, sometime. Not now. Nothing now, save the man on that bed. _How long was it, that he neglected this bed, before this quarrel, before he saw the legend tarnished and clutched Hephaistion closer with desperate grasping hands? How many nights has he turned elsewhere? It matters not. He must not think so, not with Hephaistion here, and ill, and cold to the touch. Cold, cold, so cold, he’d been cold in winter in Mieza, before they had shared, and after, perhaps, when he had left the shared bed too soon. _

 

“He was calling for you,” Xanthos is very like… no, more like Amyntor, but Hephaistion had been a son who resembled his father.

 

And that is meant as comfort, that Hephaistion had remembered him, and longed for him, in the arms of his kin, that he had gone to the shores of the Styx speaking his name. _But he is gone, gone gone gone, and there is no comfort nor can be any, and it is untrue, besides, that Hephaistion is gone. He cannot be gone, he cannot be dead. _

 

He puts a hand in the dead hair, and cradles the stiffening body close, and hungrily kisses the cooling skin. _Do not die, do not go. Do not leave me, you cannot leave me. Hephaistion, Hephaistion, you cannot leave me, I give you no leave to go. You cannot go, you must not go, I will be driven mad without you._


End file.
